Aaron Cunnington (Antares Solutions)
The global pandemic has strained connections between people, so helping others by building those connections back up is vital moving forward. Antares Solutions plans to provide that help as it moves to become a “product-led organisation”.
The systems integrator, which is one member of the Microsoft Gold Partner alliance the Cloud Collective, is planning to transition away from being a purely professional services business to become a product-led organisation within the next several months, according to its managing director Aaron Cunnington.
“We have a strong focus, a large investment bond and want to make our solutions repeatable so that what solves a problem for one customer can be leveraged to assist more people,” he said to ARN.
Two of its solutions include its Microsoft Teams governance streamlining service Tellus and personalised education chatbot QBot — both of which place an emphasis on collaboration, with the former in organisations and the latter in educational institutions.
“The pandemic has highlighted that everything is about people,” Cunnington said. “If you’re not focusing on how to make the technology that you provide usable, and letting people understand the value of change management and adoption, then you’re going to struggle.
“A user-centric approach is key to addressing these challenges and achieving organisational flexibility especially since more people are working remote and dispersed from one another. It’s vital that we provide them with the necessary support and assistance so that they can continue working in an agile manner successfully.”
That user-centric approach comes amid the uncertainty in the current market, with Cunnington viewing the key challenge for Antares’ customers as being the connections between people.
"It’s hard to not have that rapport and face to face interactions and see if someone is struggling or having an off day when you can’t see them physically,” he said. “It’s all about the engagement and sense of community that we have by building the team that you work with rather than just simply getting a particular task done.”
Then, he continued, if the integrator is able to work in the currently dispersed environment, it can then “remove the barriers that shouldn’t be there in the first place”.
“There’s an opportunity there for us to be so much more productive and effective, and we can make that happen by eliminating these barriers and making it easier to achieve that," Cunnington said.
“It’s really about capitalising on that opportunity to streamline systems and approaches to understand how we can engage with more staff and making the office more focused on the people and the culture.”
Cunnington said the company is still aligned to the same strategy it started at the end of last year, with the only thing the pandemic changed for Antares is the acceleration of its strategy.
“The rapid pace of change is the perfect opportunity for us to move faster and add value to our organisation," he said.
As Antares moves faster into the future, Cunnington views its customer-partner relationships as a “two-way street and everybody needs to be gaining something from [them]”.
“It’s now more important than ever before that we get a better understanding of customers, how they work, how they engage, and how we can continue delivering value to them," he added.
